In our modern, fast-paced society, consumers are increasingly relying upon directory assistance systems instead of conventional telephone books for quick access to directory information and guidance concerning local retail establishments or other popular destinations. Whether by use of landline or mobile telephones, directory assistance systems obviate the inconveniences of physically locating an appropriate telephone book and manually researching through the book to find a desired telephone number to call. Further, directory assistance systems are particularly useful for mobile telephone users seeking to place a telephone call while operating an automobile or otherwise being in transit.
Conventional telephone directory assistance systems operated by local telephone companies have been in place in some format for over a century, before telephones even incorporated dialing mechanisms. In the modern versions of conventional telephone directory assistance, a computerized voice prompts a user to first identify a city and state and then provide a name of a person or a business. If the information can be recognized and identified through speech recognition and/or natural language understanding software, the requested telephone number is provided through a computerized voice. Otherwise, a human telephone operator asks for additional information, such as spelling or a street address, and then performs a database search. While this service is quite useful, it is generally limited to either providing telephone numbers or directly connecting the caller to the requested person or business.
Recently, directory assistance systems, particularly those designed for use with mobile telephones, have incorporated additional features to facilitate searching for other types of information concerning retail business establishments. For example, directory assistance operators can provide information concerning the weather, movie listings, restaurants of a particular cuisine located in the vicinity, etc. These systems have proven to be quite popular. However, their operation requires direct interaction with a human operator, which is expensive.
As speech recognition technology continually improves, applications for utilizing speech recognition for information retrieval systems are becoming a more popular resource for consumers. As an example, “Info-by-voice for Atlanta” is an automated, voice-operated telephone directory that is available to consumers in the metropolitan area surrounding Atlanta, Ga., who wish to obtain directory assistance information concerning topics such as restaurants, traffic information, stock quotes, weather, sports, and business news. By using this service, a caller provides information in response to a series of questions from a synthesized voice, and then receives a list of names and contact information for businesses matching the desired criteria. For example, if a caller submitted a request for Chinese restaurants, the system might identify five places for the caller to consider. As can be readily seen, an audio information retrieval directory can provide a useful and convenient resource for local and topical information.
Developments in dynamic processing of an index in a database for information retrieval systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,878,423 to Anderson et al., issued Mar. 2, 1999 (“the '423 patent”), which is incorporated herein by reference. The '423 patent discloses a method and system for dynamically processing an index to create a set of questions used when processing a data query. An index is a guide that is processed and used to find information from within a database, such as a database of classified advertising information. The set of questions are arranged according to a question set order associated with the index, and the set of questions only includes those questions that trigger responses that are found within the index.
While information retrieval systems such as those described in the '423 patent have become more efficient in processing data inquiries and retrieving database information, there are several difficulties that are often encountered when supplying the information to a caller. Even if a caller is fully concentrating on the telephone call, it is difficult for the caller to retain more than limited amounts of the information that was provided orally by the information retrieval system. If the system provides as output a list of several business names that match the caller's request, confusion is created as the caller attempts to remember all of the information. Considering that callers typically access such systems while operating a motor vehicle or are otherwise in transit, there is a need to quickly and efficiently communicate the most pertinent information to the user. Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method of formatting the results generated by an information retrieval system to provide usable and easily discernable information.